Perfect Crime by Helen Fields Blog Tour

Today is my turn on the blog tour for "Perfect Crime" by Helen Fields. As you can see there are a lot of us on the tour, please check out the other blog stops, we all offer different content.





For my stop on the tour I have my review.

Perfect Crime by Helen Sarah Fields
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 1.5 days

Pages - 400

Publisher - Avon Books

Source - Arc

Blurb from Goodreads

Stephen Berry is about to jump off a bridge until a suicide prevention counsellor stops him. A week later, Stephen is dead. Found at the bottom of a cliff, DI Luc Callanach and DCI Ava Turner are drafted in to investigate whether he jumped or whether he was pushed…

As they dig deeper, more would-be suicides roll in: a woman found dead in a bath; a man violently electrocuted. But these are carefully curated deaths – nothing like the impulsive suicide attempts they’ve been made out to be.

Little do Callanach and Turner know how close their perpetrator is as, across Edinburgh, a violent and psychopathic killer gains more confidence with every life he takes…



My Review

This is book five in the Callanach and Turner crime/police detective series, if you haven't read the previous book I suggest you do first. You could get away with reading this as a standalone but you have missed so much of the history I think you would enjoy it more if you knew the back stories.

So this book features suicide themes and some very brutal and graphic murders. Callanach and Turner are investigating what initially looks like suicide(s), as the body count rises they have to consider they have a soulless killer in Edinburgh who is escalating in brutality with every kill. The investigation is on and as with the previous books we also get the personal life of the detectives. Callanach has his own personal investigation ongoing which brings his career and home life together in a way that will threaten everything he has worked so hard on.

I think fans of the series will be delighted we are getting some light shed on somethings left over from the previous books. Emotive, gorey, provocative, murder, suicide, police procedural, friendship, relationship, secrets and that is just some of what this book packs in. I am a Fields fan, this is a page turner and I cannot wait to see what is in store next for the characters. 4.5/5 for me this time, roll on the next.

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The GraveDigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 19 days

Publisher - Harper Perennal

Pages - 582

Blurb from Goodreads

In 1936 the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. After local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty result in unspeakable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca, begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of erotic risk and imaginative daring, ingenious self-invention, and, in the end, a bittersweet - but very "American" - triumph. "You are born here, they will not hurt you" - so the gravedigger has predicted for his daughter, which will turn out to be true.


My Review

Rebecca Schwart aka Hazel Jones aka Hazel Gallagher is our main character. We open up with Rebecca reflecting 10 years post her fathers death. Then we skip to New York, Rebecca has another name and is living a working married lady who encounters a man following her and mistaking her for another woman. We follow this time in her life briefly before heading into her childhood and her life as the Gravedigger's daughter. Here we get a view of Rebecca's life and her journey into early adulthood. The story then goes to her life as an adult and the tale follows from there.

I don't know what I expected from this book however it wasn't what I got. The main theme is really just about Rebecca the individual, who progresses in her life and becomes Hazel. She goes through a lot of hardship, loss and hurt, we follow the life of her, her husband and her son. It then, I felt, abruptly changes, leaves you hanging although in the letters at the end it hints at the sons outcome. The chapters are quite short in length which I really did appreciate and generally like in a story and a warning that there is some bad language throughout. There are many themes touched upon within the story, Nazi's, war, grief, murder, suicide, violence, love, abuse to name just some that are covered.

I found the character of Rebecca/Hazel very different although she is shaped by things that happen to her, there isn't a clear cut reason to why the big change. The relationship with the men in her life is so different, this could be reflective of the time and past male influences. Some people have loved this book, I just found it really hard to get through. I can honestly say I think this is the longest I have read a book as I had to keep putting it down to try something else as my interest would drop. Some of it is quite interesting, the decline of her fathers mental health during and after the war, how her brother reacts to the town despising them. Rebecca's personal growth and changes, in between there was a lot I really didn't like and found it didn't hold my attention. Your left with questions and the ending, whilst is can be perceived as cleverly done and well thought out, it is also rather abrupt which I personally am not a fan of. 2/5 for me this time, this was my first time reading this author and I am not sure I would read her again. Her writing style just didn't engage me however, as I have said, some people really loved this book so I would suggest giving it a bash.

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View all my reviews